Set among auto shops on an industrial backstreet, the Imdadul Islamic Centre occupies a low building that housed a furniture business before it was converted into a mosque with a shiny silver dome.

Founded by Guyanese Muslims, it has been a federally regulated charity in good standing since 1986. The mosque secretary, Osman Khan, co-chairs Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair’s Muslim Consultative Committee.

“We like a very clean sheet,” said Imdadul’s president, Haroon Sheriff.

Those who run the mosque were therefore puzzled to learn that William Plotnikov, an alleged associate of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had worshipped alongside them before leaving Toronto to join an armed Islamist group in Dagestan.

Tyler Anderson/National Post

Shown photos of the young Canadian fighter, a recent convert to Islam who was just 23 when he died in a shootout with Russian security forces last July, neither Mr. Khan nor Mr. Sheriff recognized him.

But Vitaly Plotnikov told the National Post he had dropped his son at the mosque several times in 2010. And Mr. Sheriff recalled a police officer had once visited the mosque looking for a “Russian.” Plotnikov was born in Russia.

“All that he said is, there’s a Russian guy coming here and he’s a wanted person,” Mr. Sheriff recalled, describing the officer as a Muslim of Pakistani origin. He stood outside the doors as worshippers exited after Friday prayers, Mr. Sheriff said. “After he didn’t see anybody, he just walked away.”

The investigation that led the Toronto-based counter-terrorism officer to the mosque two years ago was the Canadian component of a wider probe involving Russia’s FSB security service and the FBI — a case that is now under scrutiny in the wake of the Boston terror attacks.

Plotnikov family

At the time of the mosque visit, two years ago, the RCMP was investigating Plotnikov as a missing person. In September 2010, barely a year after converting to Islam, the former champion boxer and Seneca College student had vanished. He told his parents he had gone to France but he was actually in Moscow, where a friend became alarmed by his newfound extremism.

While a family friend called the RCMP to report him, the father notified the Russian interior ministry and, in late 2010, Plotnikov was arrested in Dagestan. Under questioning, he named Tsarnaev as one of his contacts, Bill Keating, a Massachusetts congressman who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN.

Plotnikov was released and told to go home to Canada. Meanwhile, the Russians turned their attention to Tsarnaev. On March 4, 2011, Russia’s security service sent a request to the FBI seeking information on the Boston resident.

The FBI investigation found no links to terrorism and was dropped in June, partly because the Russians had not shared what they had, notably text messages about Tsarnaev’s desire to join militants fighting in the Caucasus region of southern Russia.

AP Photo/Bob Leonard

The Russians were equally stingy with their Canadian counterparts. Even after Plotnikov was killed 10 months ago, they did not share the information about his alleged ties to Tsarnaev, several sources said.

The result was that three nations were investigating related suspects, but weren’t fully aware of what the others were doing. “It’s not untypical at all,” said Ray Boisvert, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service counter-terrorism official.

He said while sharing has improved as terrorism has become a common concern, it remains problematic and complicated by varying national interests and human rights standards. “Information is more valuable when it’s shared and linked together. At least you have a better chance of connecting dots. If it’s not,” he said, “we may all miss something really big at the other end.”

The RCMP declined to comment on its investigation into Plotnikov and its links to Tsarnaev, but his father said the Mounties had seized his son’s computer and were trying to determine who may have radicalized him and facilitated his recruitment into the Dagestan rebels.

This week, U.S. news outlets reported that Tsarnaev’s brother Dzhokhar had scrawled in a note before his capture that the bombings were retaliation for U.S. military intervention in the Muslim world.

Plotnikov was never implicated in acts of terrorism. His armed jihad appeared to have been limited to attacks on Russian forces. But the parallel path he and Tsarnaev both took raise the same disturbing question: what is turning privileged young men into terrorists who sanctify their actions with religion?

“We will kill you,” Plotnikov said in a video he recorded before his death. “We are not superheroes, we are also in need of Allah’s help and he is helping us and I am asking Allah that by next spring he gives us an opportunity to kill more non-believers, so the military trucks blow into pieces, fly around like rags. Allah is almighty and he will assist.”

The Imdadul mosque secretary, Mr. Khan, said it angered him to hear Islam cited to justify violence. “How can these people be doing these things in the name of religion?” he said. “I think they are people who are perpetrating this for personal reasons. I don’t think it’s religion-based.”

The Imdadul mosque seems an unlikely stop along Plotnikov’s journey into extremism, suggesting that while he may have prayed there, he learned the radical ideology he espoused in his video elsewhere, perhaps on the Internet.

Mr. Boisvert said those interested in extremist violence have learned to avoid mainstream mosques because they fear being reported. A mosque may be “a place of convenience and a place of contact, but from there likeminded persons will go into their own little halakas [discussion groups] and their own little private pseudo-religious meetings.”

Family handout

On a recent weeknight, Imdadul mosque volunteers were dealing with the everyday challenges of running a non-profit: ordering pizza for an upcoming event; worrying about how to pay for a leaking roof; and discussing their fundraising drive for a local hospital.

“We don’t hang around with anybody that do banditry or whatever may be,” Mr. Sheriff said. “We are Muslim and we live to standard.” Only approved scholars can speak at the mosque, he said. “You have to be either a maulana or a sheikh, these are qualified people that study in university, that is the only way that we will give you a chance.”

The mosque is run with such transparency the annual financial statements are posted on the wall for all to see. “We condemn any acts of violence,” Mr. Khan said. “It’s totally despicable and our Islam does not subscribe to these things.”

While he does not recall Plotnikov, he said the mosque had an open door. “If the father said he dropped him off here, it’s possible that he did,” he said. “People are free to attend mosque at will because that’s what it’s here for.”

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